Nigeria, April 11 -- Nigeria spends billions of naira annually to maintain pipelines used to transport oil products, with hundreds of such pipelines vandalised annually, a PREMIUM TIMES review of official data shows.

A total of 1,161 pipeline points were vandalised across Nigeria in the 21 months between January 2019 and September 2020, figures mined from the monthly financial reports of the nation's public oil company, NNPC, have shown.

The vandalism happened across five pipeline axes nationwide. The Port Harcourt axis of the pipelines recorded the largest share of the "pulverized points" within this period with 538 points being damaged.

This is followed by the Mosimi-Ibadan axis with 535 points being damaged. Other oil pipelines in G...